


Part-Time Job

by FranklyMrShankly



Series: Eerily Similar One-Shots [1]
Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 15:51:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4025788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FranklyMrShankly/pseuds/FranklyMrShankly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard gets a part-time job during art school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Part-Time Job

**Author's Note:**

> As always, wildly un-beta'd. Ask me how many fucks I give. Go on. I dare you.
> 
> Just kidding. Love me. I need you.

“I miss you,” I muttered into the phone, feeling petulant and stupid. I hated missing people. I didn’t miss my mother. I didn’t miss my brother or my dad. But I missed Frank, the asshole.

“Yeah. I know. I miss you, too.” Frank was much better with his feelings, he always had been. “I’m still coming out there next year, as soon as I wrap shit wrapped up with my dad, okay?” Frank’s dad had just died. They were a lot closer than my father and I were, and Frank had stayed home that semester to help his mother settle things, taking his classes online instead.

Next year, he was transferring to a school in the city to finish up his Bachelor’s degree and then onto law school. My clever little Frank. I was in the tail end of my first year at SVA and learning that adulthood was a lot harder than I’d anticipated. And of course, Frank knew me all too well.

“School is going good?” he asked, nonchalantly, but I knew he was building up to a question about something else. He knew how I was doing in school. This was a conversation starter.

“Yeah. Everything is great,” I replied lazily.

“You need anything from home? I’m coming up in a week. I could bring you things from your house?” he offered.

“Nah. I’m good. No room for anything else in my dorm, anyway.”

“Nothing? How are you set on money, Gerard?” 

Ah. There it was. Frank was the only one in the world who was aware that I had a frightening habit of stress spending. My comic book collection was staggering. I had a stack of sketchbooks I wouldn't have time to fill until break. What nineteen year old man needs so many band posters, huh? I was a mess. “I’m fine, Frank. I got a part time job, actually. So, when you get here, I’m taking you out. Like… out, out. Big time New York fucking City out.”

I heard Frank laughing fondly at me. “No you don’t. Knowing you, you’ve blown through your student loan disbursement with midterms, so keep the money you get burger-flipping. I’ve seen you without coffee. It’s scary.”

“We’ll see, huh, Frank?” I asked into the receiver, leaning into the vanity and lining my eyes with black kohl. “Listen. I gotta go, bro. Say hi to Mike for me. Tell him I’ll kick his testicles back into his body if he lays a hand on my shit while I’m gone.”

“Okay, Gerard. You be good up there by yourself.”

“I’m a grown man, not Little Red Riding Hood. Fuck off,” I swore at him. The others would be in the dressing room soon, and I needed to hang up and lock my shit up.

“Okay, G. Bye. See you soon,” Frank said sadly.

“Bye baby,” I said into a dead line. Frank had hung up.

 

Sad phone call forgotten, I finished dressing and prepping. I looked damn good and I knew it, my longish black hair was falling around my face, framing the pale skin that was usually marked with some form of stress acne. Being an SVA student had its advantages, though. Can you say ‘air-brushed foundation?’ Fucking brilliant.

  
The waiting is the worst part. The nerves sort of build up as you wait for your announcement and your music to start, and your palms sweat and you check your mascara a hundred times to make sure it isn’t running. Then your name is called and the lights go dim and you’re drawn to the stage. The crowd starts to roar when the spotlight finds you. Men and women whoop and call. I become a completely different person in those moments.

On that stage, I am bedroom Gerard.

These people are my lovers and I am going to tease them until they come in their pants. That is the goal. I’d dance and crawl on the stage, only briefly utilizing the pole in the center, afraid that if I try something acrobatic, I’ll break my fucking neck; I am an incredible klutz.

Ones fives and tens are pushed into the waistband of my underwear when I finally get down to it. I give achingly brief glances of what lies beneath the fabric covering my ass, but we don’t get completely naked here. Not normally.

It seems like it isn’t much, but I could usually rack in about three hundred in tips a week, just by dancing two nights. It was worth the tiny lump of nerves and shame and “Oh shit, what if Ma finds out?!” in the back of my throat. My phone bill got paid and the supply of coffee and comic books never ran dry.

 

The next week was bringing with it Frank’s visit. He was meant to come in early on Saturday morning, so I told my manager that I couldn’t dance Saturday night.  He wasn’t all that pleased, but really, he didn’t give enough of a fuck to argue about it, either.

I figured I’d work a little extra hard on Friday to make up for it, anyway. I danced my usual dances and then, much to the manager’s delight, signed myself up for lap dance duty. That meant I had to put on something skimpy in between sets and serve shots, asking patrons if they wanted a special dance. Lap dances were embarrassing, but I was damn good at it and it paid extra. For one night, I could stand it.

The night was a blur. I was sky-fucking high and I felt like the world was fast-forward as I danced both on the stage and in the side room. Tips were rolling in and I knew my cut from the dances was going to be astronomical in comparison. I was going to take Frank out somewhere extra nice on Saturday.

“Gee?” The bartender shouted at me as I hopped off of the stage for the last time that night. I walked over and took a glass of water from him.

“Someone waiting on me?” I asked, tilting my eyes to the curtain.

“Yeah. Dark haired guy. Super intense look in his eyes.”

“Sounds hot,” I said with an eyeroll. I didn’t feel like doing this anymore. I wanted to go homer and shower and crawl into my awful twin bed and sleep for a million years. The drugs were wearing off. The bartender noticed and took pity on me, motioning me forward and discreetly offering me a bump, which I gladly accepted. By the time I drained my water and visited the restroom, I was back in fighting form, and I made my way to the partition to see who had paid for my services.

The smirking face I was met with was not the one I was expecting. I closed the drape quickly and rounded on my guest.

“Motherfucker this is not what you’re supposed to be spending you inheritance on!” I hissed at Frank who just smirked.

“Part time job huh?”

I blushed a little and nodded. “Yeah. Two days a week,” I said sheepishly. “Pay’s better than anything else and it doesn’t take away from school work…”  I straddled Frank as I spoke, paying attention to the beat of the music coming from the speakers near the stage.

“What are you doing, Gee?”

“You paid for a lap-dance, didn’t you?” I grinned and turned around, swinging my hips and moving my ass down towards his lap. The arms of the chair served as suspension bars and I lifted myself up, inches from his crotch.

“Yeah, but I didn’t mean you had to actually give me one, Gerard. C’mon.” He was blushing furiously, but there was also direct evidence of his excitement poking up from his lap.

“You don’t want me to dance for you baby? Been a while since you had me, you know… Are you sure you didn’t ask for the dance as foreplay? Stripper kink you need to work out?” I leaned my head back against his shoulder.

Frank was my best friend in the world, and occasionally, we fucked each other senseless. It was an amazing arrangement. All the love in the world, but no strings and no empty commitments. We were both happy and satisfied… or we were until I moved away to school.

The song ended shortly and I excused myself, asking him to wait by the bar.  It was almost closing time, which meant it was pretty fucking late, so I clocked out and went in the back to change back into my normal clothes. I left the eyeliner. And the suspenders.

“You’re not supposed to take clients home, G-man. It’s bad for business and illegal if you’re caught,” the bartender warned me as I slid into the seat next to Frank and stole a sip of his gin and tonic.

“Calm down, Sam,” I waived him away. “Not a client. Old friend from home. He’s only here for a visit.” I waited for Frank to sign his credit card slip and then took his hand, leading him out the front door and toward the train.

“So, uh… How did you find me?” I asked as we scanned our Metropasses.

“I checked into my hotel early then went by Washington. Your roomie told me where you worked,” Frank answered with a chuckle.

“You weren’t supposed to be here until the morning.”

“I wanted to surprise you. Did it work?”

“Impressively.”

He pulled me onto the train and pushed me into the only open seat, choosing to hang onto the overhead bars instead. “Well, good. Also, surprise, motherfucker. I got into Columbia. When you come back next semester, I’m coming too.”

I jumped up out of my seat, despite the fact that my legs were really fucking sore, and launched myself into his arms. “Congrats Frankie!” I kissed his cheek and held him close. It had been a rough year for him, and I’d known he wasn’t satisfied staying in Jersey or taking online classes. “I know you worked real hard for this. I’m so glad you can transfer!”

He hugged me close and I let myself believe for one moment that he was mine. That Frank Iero was my boyfriend and not just my best friend. I gave myself until the end of that hug to play pretend and act like I had every right to keep him for my own.

Soon the hug was over; we were back where we ought to have been. Best friends, fuck buddies. Us side by side and against the world, but never really a fully united force.

It wasn’t the last hug of the night or the weekend. It wasn’t the only time we were close during that time, either. We went back to his hotel room for the weekend and enjoyed each other completely and in every sense of the word.

We made love and slept in. I took him to Midtown Comics and out to lunch. He took me to the Met and out for coffee. The whole weekend was spent in such a fashion and it was perfect. Anyone who looked at us saw a young gay couple in love. That was the fiction, of course. We both knew that he was heading home to his girlfriend on Sunday night and that I was still serial dating second years… But we allowed ourselves to play into that image, into that fantasy.

It was such a beautiful fantasy.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter if you wanna @FranklyMisterS


End file.
